Patterns of local, intercontinental and interseasonal variation of soil bacterial and eukaryotic microbial communities. Issue 3 (1st February 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: De Gruyter, Johan; Weedon, James T; Bazot, Stéphane; Dauwe, Steven; Fernandez-Garberí, Pere-Roc; Geisen, Stefan; De La Motte, Louis Gourlez; Heinesch, Bernard; Janssens, Ivan A; Leblans, Niki; Manise, Tanguy; Ogaya, Romà; Löfvenius, Mikaell Ottosson; Peñuelas, Josep; Sigurdsson, Bjarni D; Vincent, Gaëlle; Verbruggen, Erik
• Is Part Of: FEMS microbiology ecology. Volume 96:Issue 3(2020)
• Publication Date: 2020-02-01
• Subjects: soil microbial communities -- spatio-temporal variability -- microbial ecology -- protists -- soil biogeography; Microbial ecology -- Periodicals; Microbiology -- Periodicals; 579.17
• DOI: 10.1093/femsec/fiaa018
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0168-6496

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Although ongoing research has revealed some of the main drivers behind global spatial patterns of microbial communities, spatio-temporal dynamics of these communities still remain largely unexplored. Here, we investigate spatio-temporal variability of both bacterial and eukaryotic soil microbial communities at local and intercontinental scales. We compare how temporal variation in community composition scales with spatial variation in community composition, and explore the extent to which bacteria, protists, fungi and metazoa have similar patterns of temporal community dynamics. All soil microbial groups displayed a strong correlation between spatial distance and community dissimilarity, which was related to the ratio of organism to sample size. Temporal changes were variable, ranging from equal to local between-sample variation, to as large as that between communities several thousand kilometers apart. Moreover, significant correlations were found between bacterial and protist communities, as well as between protist and fungal communities, indicating that these microbial groups change in tandem, potentially driven by interactions between them. We conclude that temporal variation can be considerable in soil microbial communities, and that future studies need to consider temporal variation in order to reliably capture all drivers of soil microbiome changes. Abstract : Soil microbes exhibit strong spatial patterns determined by their size as well as co-changing temporal patterns between groups.